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Piece 6 of 8

Warsaw city-centre towers in silhouette against a red and orange sky at dusk.
RealTimes

POLAND

Poland arrives city by city, not as one pavilion

Warsaw, Silesia, Łódź and Wrocław each run their own stand in Hall A2. What that says about who sells Poland to international capital, and about who is buying.

RealTimes desk · 5 min read

Photo: Simon Jowett, CC0 1.0

Tune the Dive to you

I’mheading to EXPO REAL

Showing the three reads every visitor starts with. Change the role to reorder them.

  1. Read first
    What can actually get done in Munich?

    EXPO REAL opens with lenders keen but choosy, prices still under negotiation and projects waiting on terms, power and policy. This is the field guide to which of those can move in Munich.

    Why these?

    The spine of the Dive: capital, clearing price and action, in one read.

  2. Then
    The room can clear a price without closing a deal

    Munich may help buyers, sellers and lenders test a number. That does not mean the market has finished repairing its balance sheet.

    Why these?

    Where Munich tests a number, and why a number is not yet a deal.

  3. Then
    The new asset is not always a building

    At EXPO REAL, the investable question is increasingly about power, networks and the land that makes them possible. The constraint may be a grid connection, not a planning consent.

    Why these?

    Why the constraint this year may be a grid connection, not a permit.

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Draft post🇵🇱 Walk Hall A2 in Munich and Poland does not announce itself once. It announces itself four times.

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3 expert calls in this piece:

City Investment Director, PolandOffice or Industrial Development Director, PolandOffice or Industrial Investment Partner, Poland

TL;DR

  • Poland arrives at EXPO REAL 2026 without a national pavilion: Warsaw, Silesia, Łódź and Wrocław each hold a separate stand in Hall A2.
  • The Polish first half was the strongest since 2018 by CBRE's count, more than €3bn, 78% above H1 2025, and Cushman and Wakefield traces only 43.0% of Poland's H1 2026 volume to Central European capital.
  • The city-by-city model buys competition and costs coherence: an investor who wants 'Poland' walks between stands, and no single voice makes the case for Poland over its neighbours.

Walk the length of Hall A2 in Munich this October and Poland does not announce itself once. It announces itself four times: Warsaw at A2.121, Silesia at A2.120, Łódź at A2.122, Wrocław at A2.022, each with its own city officials, its own developer partners and its own pitch to whichever investor happens to stop. There is no Polish national stand. PAIH, the national investment agency, has no stand. An investor who wants to understand "Poland" in one conversation cannot have it; she has to walk the row, a fragmentation that sits inside the wider country-by-country grid this Dive builds around Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Romania.

Each stand is built differently, and the roster says something about who is selling. Warsaw's zone carries 12 named co-exhibitors, from developers such as Echo Investment, BBI Development and Skanska Commercial Development Europe to investors such as Griffin Capital Partners and Peakside Capital Advisors. Silesia pairs Katowice City Hall and the Górnośląsko-Zagłębiowska Metropolia with companies including 3D ESTATE and Develocity. Łódź brings its Special Economic Zone alongside HILLWOOD, JHM DEVELOPMENT and OKAM Capital. Wrocław's directory listing names the developer Develia SA as co-exhibitor. The pattern across all four is the same: the city hosts the stand; most named co-exhibitors are private developers and investors.

A red tram in central Katowice with glass office towers rising behind it.
Photo: Bern1894, CC BY-SA 4.0

That fragmentation is not how Poland's neighbours arrive. Czechia returns as a state-organised national exposition under a single banner. Romania has a joint stand run by its German chamber of commerce. Hungary's presence is led by an industry association. Poland is the largest of the four markets by first-half investment volume and the only one without any shared umbrella at all. The case for the city model is genuine local ownership: each city argues its own sites with the people who actually know them. The cost is the trade-off: nobody at the fair is making the case for Poland against Czechia, and each Polish stand is competing with the others as much as with its regional neighbours.

The capital numbers give the fragmentation a harder edge. CBRE recorded more than €3bn of Polish investment in H1 2026, 78% above H1 2025 and the strongest Polish first half since 2018. Warsaw's office vacancy fell to 8.5% by the end of June 2026, and to 4.8% in the city centre, on 6.23m sqm of modern stock, by CBRE's count, and Poland held 52% of CEE-6 industrial stock at end-Q2, at 6.6% vacancy. Warsaw's prime office yield stood at 5.75% at Q2 2026, 75 bp wide of Prague's, on Cushman and Wakefield's benchmark. The occupier and pricing story is strong. What has changed is who is buying it: Cushman and Wakefield traces only 43.0% of Poland's H1 2026 volume to Central European capital, against 30.0% from Western Europe and 19.4% from the US and Canada, and Poland alone took 56.7% of all CEE-7 volume in the half. The international bid is back in Poland, and that raises the stakes of the fragmentation: the four stands are competing for the same returning pool of international capital, at the same time each is arguing it has the better local pitch. Czechia and Slovakia: whose money sets the price? tests the same regional-capital question one country over.

Varso Tower and the Złota 44 residential tower rising over central Warsaw under a clear blue sky, with the Rondo Daszyńskiego office cluster, including Warsaw Spire, on the skyline behind.
Photo: Cybularny, CC0 1.0

Munich is one of the few weeks of the year when Polish sellers meet a non-regional bid in any volume, which is exactly why who staffs these four stands matters as a pricing question, not only a branding one. A buyer who only visits Warsaw's stand sees Warsaw's version of Poland. A buyer who walks all four gets a fuller, harder-to-compare picture, and most buyers do not have the time to walk all four.

What to test in Munich

  • Ask a city delegate which investor they came to meet, and what they need from Munich to bring that investor to Poland.
  • Ask a developer sitting on a city stand what share of the equity behind their last three deals came from outside Central and Eastern Europe.
  • Compare how Warsaw, Silesia, Łódź and Wrocław each frame the same national investment figures. A shared number pitched four different ways is itself evidence of the trade-off.
Sources

Expert call · City Investment Director · Poland

City Investment Director, Poland

Warsaw, Silesia, Łódź and Wrocław each hold a separate stand in Hall A2, with no Polish national pavilion and no PAIH stand at all.

  1. Which one site is your city bringing to Munich?
  2. In two sentences, what should an investor know about it?
Answer this piece

Answer in two lines, sent to Dominica@RealTimes.co. Unattributed unless you say otherwise.

Expert call · Office or Industrial Development Director · Poland

Office or Industrial Development Director, Poland

CEE-origin capital supplied 55.0% of the region's H1 2026 volume, down from 64.8% a year earlier, while Poland's own H1 2026 investment reached more than €3bn, its strongest first half since 2018.

  1. In your company's last three deals, what share of the equity came from outside CEE, in %?
  2. Is that share going up or down?
Answer this piece

Answer in two lines, sent to Dominica@RealTimes.co. Unattributed unless you say otherwise.

Expert call · Office or Industrial Investment Partner · Poland

Office or Industrial Investment Partner, Poland

An investor who wants to understand Poland in one conversation cannot have it, since there is no shared national stand and each city argues its own pitch.

  1. Which Polish city stand showed your team a real site, not just a slogan?
  2. What made it more concrete than the other pitches?
Answer this piece

Answer in two lines, sent to Dominica@RealTimes.co. Unattributed unless you say otherwise.

Next up

Silhouettes of Prague's towers, domes and Charles Bridge statues against an orange dawn sky, street lamps still lit.Photo: Petar Milošević, CC BY-SA 4.0
CZECHIA AND SLOVAKIA

Czechia and Slovakia: whose money sets the price?

Czechia brings one national exposition to Munich and a market driven by its own capital. Is Prague's tight yield a sign of depth, or a door outside buyers struggle to open?
Plan this topic: Central and Eastern Europe →

RealTimes PeerView brings this conversation to EXPO REAL, in the room, between two senior peers. See RealTimes PeerView

Goes to Dominica@RealTimes.co.

Read next by role

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City or regional delegation

See how Poland, Czechia and Romania each stage themselves in Munich, and test the same entry-versus-exit question against your own city's pitch.

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ROMANIA

Romania's yield premium: a reward for moving first or a warning?

Romania comes to Munich on a chamber-led stand with the widest prime office yield in one broker's CEE list. Is that a reward, or the price of thin liquidity?

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THE ARGUMENT

The room can clear a price without closing a deal

Munich may help buyers, sellers and lenders test a number. That does not mean the market has finished repairing its balance sheet.

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